


Decaying Stars

by Tagpye



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, I'm in the business of writing really melodramatic sex, Ma'am this is a Chili's, Past Relationship(s), Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:54:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26027551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tagpye/pseuds/Tagpye
Summary: She meets him at the edge of the universe.No matter how, no matter where, they always come together like this. It's an inevitability, something written in the cosmos. Regardless the pain doesn't ever really stop hurting.Thirteen invites the Master to somewhere they can reminisce. Memories are so hard to kill after all.
Relationships: The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who), Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 46





	Decaying Stars

**Author's Note:**

> I'll preface this by saying I know nothing about Astronomy I am taking sheer creative liberties.
> 
> I've been obsessed with these two for an extremely long time so I can't really say why I've only just written about them. I can't really say what this fic is, view it as an extensive character/relationship study. I'm hardly invested in the series anymore but I'm still mad for these two so excuse any continuity errors.
> 
> Probably set somewhere between Spyfall and the Timeless Child.

She meets him at the edge of the universe.

The exact year, the exact time, escapes her. It’s a few hundred billion years or so, somewhere in some distant disparate galaxy. 

The location itself isn’t important anyway, she chose this place for the spectacle. 

He’s standing in the viewing bay, and it’s quiet. The endless multitude of space is painted on an extravagant curling canvas through the glass. She supposed the explosion of a star isn’t a particularly enthralling nor unique sight when the entire universe itself is beginning to flicker out. This ship is a public viewing space, but it’s pointedly bare save for a few souls meandering around in rooms and platforms unknown. 

It’s just them, and the raw power of the cosmos.

Somehow however, the backdrop suits him. 

He’s bathed in the eerie glow of dying starlight and it stops her in her tracks. 

She’s not certain if he’s noticed her, because he doesn’t pay her a sliver of attention. His eyes are locked rapturously on the supernova, she can almost see the light dancing against his iris. His fingers tap, as if frustrated, as if there’s a part of him rapping against the prison bars begging to be let out.

Tap tap tap tap.

Tap tap tap tap.

She wants nothing more than to silence his hand with hers. 

“You took your time.” The Master eventually replies. He doesn’t bother turning to look at her, his gaze remains outside.

“Yeah well…” she shrugs, “Wasn’t exactly sure you were gunna show up.”

The tapping stops. “...Guess I wasn’t too sure either.”

A silence settles between them again, she continues to watch him, he continues to stare into the distance.

“Why did you?” She eventually asks. Her voice breaks the quiet far too sharply, it’s a strange uncomfortable feeling, like speaking aloud during a prayer. “Why did you show up?”

He stills, until a particular kind of frustration broils in him and he tenses in response. 

“Why did you invite me?” he snaps back, “What could you possibly want to talk to me about?”

“I-” Her mouth shuts. The truth is she doesn’t have anything to say, nothing that hasn’t been said before anyway. In reality the truth is far bitter than what she wants to acknowledge, it sits uncomfortable and stinging against her tongue.

She sighs aloud, and clasps her hands with a flourish. “Alright, say you’re allergic to a food. Dunno, like... peanut butter.”

“Peanut butter...” He responds blithely.

“Yeah. But as it turns out, you actually really like peanut butter, you’ve always liked peanut butter. It’s great. No other taste like it! But you find you’re allergic, just the smell is enough to give you hives, heaven forbid you take a bite! Your throat swells up, your chest grows tight, you could die!”

“But the memory is always there, in the back of your mind, you miss it, you miss how it tastes. Human beings have a terrible terrible habit of pushing their limits. Capsaicin is a chemical found particularly in chillies, it’s an irritant designed to ward off potential predators. Yet humans still eat it, why? Am I making sense?”

His mouth sits slightly agape, “None whatsoever.”

“You’re peanut butter.”

“I’m what?”

“No… No sorry you’re right, I’m not making much sense.” she scratches her head, “What I mean to say is I...”

“I wanted to see you. Just once, just… like this.”

The look he gives her is nothing short of contemptible. 

“I didn’t come here to play nice.”

The colours have shifted outside, a solemn blue illuminates the room.

“Sometimes…” She speaks, reaching out for the railing and mirroring his pose. “Sometimes I can forget you exist. It’s so much easier that way, if I spent every waking moment wondering about you I’d suffocate. But then I think about it long and hard and decide that’s probably what you want me to do, to think about you all the time. To choke, you want me to choke.”

She’s grabbed a modicum of attention from him now. She reaches out a hand, and wraps it around her own neck.

“It can get really hard sometimes, I can spend a millennia not caving in, and then one day all of that hard work crumbles away. You’ve always been very good at doing that. You like to see me buckle under the strain.”

“Crushing. Tighter, and tighter, until there’s no air left. Isn’t that right?”

She doesn’t miss the way his eyes latch onto her fingers, following the curve of her neck and the dimpling of skin as her hand clasps around it. He was always very predictable in that regard, the violence seems to edge over him, something feral and eager in his expression.

“You still haven’t told me what you’re here for _Doctor_.” The last word he snarls, his composure is becoming undone. It’s a nature not even a dying star can soothe. “For a moment I actually believed you had something important to say.”

A tepid sigh leaves her lips, “I’m here because I miss you. I think that’s why you’re here too.”

“Think again.”

“Alright, _miss_ probably isn’t the right word.” She moves towards him, and it’s as tense as approaching a wild animal. He’ll pounce, at some point. 

“I _ache_. My chest is so tight. It… hurts. But I want to hurt, I want to steal a moment with you, I want you to hurt with me. I don’t want anything else.”

It’s not like she has ever been scarce for moments with him, she had him locked in a vault for heaven's sake. Years upon years upon years. It still didn’t feel enough. In a place as serene as this, she could pretend that there was peace between them, that they were content, that he was beside her, that… that they could be something more than what they were.

“So _sanctimonious_ , I’ve always hated that about you.” He laughs, “You keep acting like we’re different, the only difference is I’m honest about myself. If you could have it your way, you’d have me leashed to you like a dog. You’d tell yourself, ‘I’m doing this for the safety of everyone else. Aren’t I such a _selfless_ righteous person?’.”

“You just want me to yourself, you’re a despicable person and you always have been.”

This is a pointless argument, but she feels her head shake regardless. 

“No, no I always wanted you to be your best. Because you are better, you can be so much better-”

“-better with you?!” He cuts in, “I will hurt the people you love time and time again to prove to you I am worse. I always will, I won’t ever stop. And the worse part of it all is how you forgive me each time! You’re a hypocrite, you have always been a pretentious righteous pathetic hypocrite!”

Her steps halt, and she’s left in limbo with just a bare meter between them. A rotten desperate urging in her head tells her that none of that is true. It isn’t true, is it? 

She can’t say she has done right in all her many lives, but she’s tried her best. Unlike him, the only time he ever tried he tore her two hearts into two million little fragments. She never wants to dwell on the past, with a life as long as hers she would simply be consumed by every mistake. It’s what makes regeneration easier, an old old soul settling into somewhere new. The thoughts are fresh, the heart is fresh, she can pretend it’s a brand new start and the past has no sway.

It’s a lie she tells herself every time, because the truth has her standing here with him yet again.

“You’re right.” She says, her toes pressing testingly forward. “I’m a hypocrite. I’m not a good person.”

His head turns suddenly and she’s reminded of the game human children like to play, _What Time is it Mr Wolf?_ She freezes and doesn’t move an inch, it’s a game, it’s always a game with them.

“Then…” He stops, a hand reaches up to rub at his mouth. “Then why won’t you stay with me?”

There’s always a painful ache in her gut when he says things like that. Impossible things, things that simply can never be. To respond would be to infuriate him, so she remains silent as she closes the gap between them. Up close he looks like he’s falling apart, the ache burns. 

“I’m sorry.” She whispers, and places a hand against his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

There isn’t a chance to react when his hand shoots out and balls into the back of her hair, he pulls painfully, and takes advantage of her pained gasp and parted lips to claim her mouth.

It isn’t a pleasant kiss, it’s all too fierce and rough and she’s all too aware this is a very dangerous situation that she’s tip-toed straight into.

When this tongue prods into her mouth however, she finds that she can’t quite conjure up a single thought.

She can taste him, she can smell him. She’s suffocating on the flavour, it’s intoxicating to the point of oblivion but she can’t quite pull away. Not when he’s been sitting heavy in her gut, in her thoughts, like a parasite eating away at her insides. 

His mind begins to press at hers, at once a touch, quickly a rapid knocking, a rampant hammering against her head not long after. 

“Stop-” She says aloud against his lips, the cacophony deafening, “Stop it!”

The assault falters and he pulls back, his grip on her remains however. He still has a fist threaded into her hair, and the other sits possessively at her waist. She’s snared in the trap, tangled up to the point of no escape. She somewhat wonders if this is what she wanted from the start.

“Why? This is what you wanted isn’t it?” He replies, and for a moment the Doctor panics that he has managed to get into her thoughts after all. Alas no, he just knows her that well, different bodies can only offer a slight bit of variety in the grand scheme of things.

“Master…” 

“Isn’t it?”

She grimaces, reaching out to press her hands tenderly against his face. 

“You’re beautiful.” She utters, not missing the way his eyelids flutter.

He grips painfully at her wrists, prying them away and pressing her flat against the railing. The metal digs into the small of her back, but there is no relief as he boxes her in with the hard warmth of his body. 

“Stop running away.” He hisses, “Be honest, you deserve to give me that much.”

“What do you want me to say?” She snaps in response, “What do you want to hear? I’m not going to lie to you that I can accept everything you are. I thought you could be different, I thought we could be different I…”

It’s choking again, cloying up her throat and sitting sticky and heavy in the centre of her chest. She’s excited, her body thrumming with that familiar kind of heat. It’s messy, it’s something discordant and incompatible churning and sloshing around and around in her head. 

He tries to compose himself but she can feel the mania pulsing under his skin, winding up like a Jack-in-the-box, with just the drop of the pin she could evision hands around her neck. 

“Turn around.” He says calmly. 

“No.”

Unlike in other circumstances, here he has nothing here to threaten her with,

theoretically.

The heavy pressure eases and he’s stepping backwards. It’s laughable how quickly she reaches out to hold him in place.

They’re at an impasse. The sounds of their breathing fills her ears.

“Turn around.” He repeats. 

Her mind works at a million miles per hour, but even with all that processing power there’s no solid conclusion she can reach. Her lips twitch with annoyance, and she turns to face the window. 

For a moment, the sight outside captures her attention. Waves of solar energy are buffeting the spaceship, vibrant and chaotic. It’s tragic that this stellar mass has reached the end of its lifespan, but at the same time it’s extraordinary. Perhaps, in a distant observant sort of way, she could understand why the Master saw such beauty in destruction.

He presses against her again, and this time she’s all too aware of something rigid digging into her rear.

“Remarkable, isn’t it?” He murmurs beside her ear. “All that chaos, all that _power_.”

His hands fumble at her waist, gently running along the band of her trousers and tugging at her shirt.

“What are you doing?” 

“You’ve been begging me, pining for me nonstop. It’s sickening.” He spits, “Do you think I like this? You never ever leave me, you’re always there, inside of me, around me, a constant _blot_ on the horizon.”

The prickle of another mind buzzes just at the edge of her periphery, like a gnat flying around the room and bumping harmlessly against her skull. 

“Doctor, I enjoy nothing more than seeing that look in your eyes when I suck the hope right out of them. Do you understand? I despise you and everything that you make me.”

“I think…” She prods, perhaps dangerously, “I think you hate the way I make you feel because I remind you of all that you can be.”

His roaming hands pause, fingers edging along the sliver of skin exposed along her waist. 

“Really?” He replies, voice deceptively calm. “You think you’re so wonderful that I can only see your _radiance_ reflected back?”

He tugs at her suspenders, shoving away layers of clothing before she can even begin to protest.

“This.” He wrenches down her trousers and she yells in response. “This is what I hate the most about you.”

“This is a public place, you can’t just-”

“Can’t I?” He sneers. “You don’t want anyone else to know that you let me fuck you?”

This isn’t the first time they’ve done this. In fact, they’ve done it so many times she’s lost count. It’s so frequent that it doesn’t feel out of place, it feels relatively normal, just another facet to their relationship, just another quirk to bicker over. He’s too coy to predict the next time, sometimes he wants her, sometimes he gets more pleasure from destroying her soul. It’s part of the game you see. 

For someone who refers to themselves as the Master it’s rather ironic that she’s had him more times she’s had regenerations. Memories of him under her swim by tempestuously, it’s not possible at the moment, not without the right equipment anyway. 

“Not here.” She steels herself, “We… we can go elsewhere.”

“No.” He asserts, “No I’m going to do you here, or I can leave you to finish yourself off.”

She’s wet despite it all, it’s not a sensation she’s particularly used to but she understands the damp between her legs is an indication she’s excited by all of this. At least it’s not as obvious as an erection poking from her trousers, she’s saved from that embarrassment at least.

He runs a hand along the bare skin of her belly, meandering upwards and pawing at the cup of her bra. His fringe tickles against the nape of her neck and she shivers, he’s leaning in and pressing his face against the softness of her hair. Despite it all she wants to kiss him, she wants to see his expression as he becomes undone. 

He slips a hand into the warmth of her breast and she gasps.

“Please, not here.”

“Then _leave_.”

His voice is painfully soft, and it’s as if he knows every note and intonation to coax her into complacency. The reality of the situation is weighing on her, stark and logical against the hammering of her hearts and the heady rush of his scent.

She winds her fingers around the railing, spreading herself further open. Splayed, like an animal for the slaughter. He’s quick to rush in for the kill.

It’s almost tender the way his hands roam across her body, he gently brushes the hair away from her shoulder, tucking it behind her ear and coaxing it away from the curve of her neck. The lips that follow are careful and delicate, following the lines of her body, whispering by the lobe of her ear and tracing further down. He pauses for a moment at the crux of her shoulder, and it almost feels like a mean trick when he suddenly bites into the skin and sucks until it’s burning raw.

Her voice hitches. She’s losing her sense, and the fringes of his mind are knocking on her proverbial door.

She questions the likelihood someone will walk in. This place was chosen on the merit of its relative emptiness, but there’s plenty of people here, there’s plenty of staff, plenty of sightseers. Factoring in the size of the ship however, it’s unlikely they’d bump into another soul.

There’s still the risk, the shame sits hot in her belly and in the sting of the love bite on her neck. 

Whatever the Master is thinking is a mystery, he has no shame in humiliating her amongst her companions. Amongst _humanity_. But she supposes it’s the raw truth of it all, that time and time again she’ll come back to him. He wants to mark her and make her allegiances known, he’ll fuck in front of the universe, in the presence of the cosmos tearing themselves asunder.

His fingers hook under the band of her underwear, and he’s peeling her last layer of defence.

“Can I look at you, at least?” She questions, slightly perturbed by his silence.

“No.” He simply utters, “I’m not going to give you the pleasure.”

A desperate sob leaves her lips, and he’s back to thumping against her mind. 

His warm hand drops below, he’s circling around her stomach, appraising the curve of her hips and the softness of her thighs. She can feel how hard he is, jutting and firm and a constant reminder of what he’s doing, what _they’re_ doing. In a sick sick way it makes her hearts beat, he wants her and he desires her. If she closes her eyes she can pretend this is tender and sweet. 

It’s raw and possessive, no amount of fantasising can hide the fact. And perhaps the worst part of it all is that it would be a lie to say she hasn’t fucked him in the exact same way.

Everything mutes out when his fingers press through her sex, nothing else exists other than the burn in her gut and his staggered breathing by her ears.

“Of course you’re getting off to this.” He mocks, pulling his hand away from between her legs and inspecting the sticky mucus on his fingers. For a moment she stares at it too, it’s a sobering reminder that this body is oh so very different. He stretches his fingers to watch the substance stretch and gel, then shoves the digits straight into her mouth.

She splutters, but he’s got a quick hold of her jaw. He presses all the way in to the back of her throat and it’s a test of her gag reflex to not choke from the sting. 

“Do you like how it tastes?” He laughs, but he’s quiet and humouring. Like he’s being merciful and kind. 

The fingers shove roughly into her mouth again and again, and his other hand moves to knot in her hair, wrenching her head back and forth and using her as leverage. It’s a challenge not to cough and splutter to the point of passing out when he finally eases up. There’s drool dripping down her chin when his fingers pop out of her mouth, the slight reflection in the glass doesn’t help matters. She doesn’t want to see how messy she can become. 

A change in the air piques her attention, and the Master seems to be conflicted as his breath stutters and stills. It’s a mystery as to what conclusion he’s come to however, because he’s pawing at her hips again and yanking them further back. 

She can hear the zipper of his trousers and it’s almost shameful how she clenches in anticipation. 

There’s a peculiar searing heat settling in her body when he smooths his bare cock through her soaking slit. She hadn’t quite realised how much she had been yearning to be filled until the notion of him settled deep inside of her hits her square in the chest. She spares a pointless glance towards the door, if anyone were to come in now there would be no hiding what they were doing. This is what they were, this is what they are, two people pulling the entire universe into their squabbles.

He presses just at her entrance, and she shakes in response.

“Let me touch you.” She pleads again, “I want you.”

She’s ignored, he begins to push into her body and her fingernails clench into the railing.

It’s at that moment that his consciousness swims over hers. It isn’t a pressing nor a poking, it’s an indirect assault. She likened it to sitting in your house and someone outside turning the dial on their music. It thumps and it booms, no matter which room she’s sat in it’s shaking the foundations and splitting through the walls. 

She realises that’s the intention. He wants in. The only closeness she can have with him is perhaps one of the most intimate of all. 

As he slides into her inch by inch the mental resources she has to protect herself are quickly being eroded away. She’s moaning incoherently, he’s deep deep inside, and that still isn’t enough for him. 

Her hands itch, she wants to hold him, she wants that intimacy of his head in her palm and his gasps on her lips. The emptiness erodes a hole in her hearts, or perhaps that cavity was always there. Wide and gaping and filled with nothingness. It’s large enough that he can stick his hand in she reckons, but no matter how far he reaches he won’t be able to touch where it ends.

“Do you ever think about it?” She garbles, she’s not even sure what she’s saying, “Do you ever think about being beside me? We could see and do so so much-”

His voice catches, he’s moving gently, far too soft given the circumstances. 

“I would rather die.”

She shakes her head, “Don’t say that. Don’t say that like you don’t feel the same way.”

His hands grip into her sides, the pretence of care is over now it seems, he smacks into her roughly and she feels her spine bow. 

The pressure against her head is a constant now. It’s impossible to think. It’s impossible to care about being discovered. It’s impossible to marvel at the disintegrating star sparkling in her eyes.

BANG BANG BANG BANG.

A steady beat, nonstop and all-encompassing. It’s enough to drive her mad.

“What do you want from me?” She gasps.

“Everything.” He replies. “I want to take everything from you until you have nothing left.”

“And once you’ve taken everything, what are you left with? Do you really think that can ever make you happy?”

What happens when everything has burned out? Palms full of ashes? The end of everything, the start of nothing. It hurts that it’s so fatalistic. Violent, powerful, destructive, but at the end… nothing. Emptiness. A great void.

His fringe tickles the sensitive skin on her back, he’s getting close, he slams into her and she clenches and moans. 

“Are you happy, Doctor? I don’t think you are, I think you run around saving the universe to hide the fact you feel just as empty as me.”

It seems a degree of restraint has slipped, he kisses at her ear, biting and nipping and letting out shuddering breaths into the crook of her neck. His hips are frantic, rough and unceasing. She doubts he’d care if he was hurting her, he grabs at her body and the sounds of them, dirty and animalistic, fill her ears.

“Let me in. I don’t want to be alone any more.” 

When she does, it’s a cascade. He’s hitting against her walls, somewhere deep and nested in her body that makes her words curdle. She’s so close to climax that the rush of another mind overloads her senses. She can’t see but she can _feel_. She feels so much.

It’s horrid and depraved, furious and frantic. The sheer aggression and hate that pulls over the mental contact is so explosive it’s as if a match has been dropped onto a room that’s been marinated in gasoline. The images she sees are traumatising, it’s the product of nightmares, blood and chaos beyond her imagination. Despite all of that she knows she’s coming, the rush of emotion is impossible to keep at bay. It rumbles and pours over her and she’s vaguely aware she’s crying as her body shakes and convulses. 

Through it all, perhaps the worst of it all, she feels content. The hole has been filled with all that he is and for the first time in a while she feels complete. Echoes of him linger in their shared spaces. There’s nothing coherent in there, but she understands the intention. Want, possession, need. 

He’s all around her, and inside her, and it worries her how addicting the feeling is. She wants to tangle in with him until it isn’t clear where the boundaries between them lie. She feels so so _full_.

But he’s gone. The connection is snapped and when she comes to he’s not there physically either. 

She slumps to the floor, regaining her senses, regaining who she is. The spectacle is still going on outside but now she simply feels ambivalent towards it.

This is how it always is in the end. The outcome never changes. She reaches between her legs and touches at his cum leaking from her sex. It makes her feel disgusting, but regardless the pang of longing never leaves. Yet again it wasn’t enough, she still needs more, it’s a need that can never be filled.

How much time passes? She’s not sure, she sits there as her eyes sting. 

She’s found she can’t cry anymore, she shed all of those tears a long time ago.


End file.
